A large number of studies have studied the influence of emotional experience on an individual’s estimation performance, but the influence of implicit emotion regulation is still unknown. Participants were asked to complete the following tasks in order: idiom matching task, multiplication computational estimation task (MCE task), gender judgment task (GJ task), and emotional experience intensity assessment task. The words matching task was adopted to achieve the purpose of implicit emotion regulation (implicit reappraisal and implicit suppression). Behavioral results showed that implicit reappraisal and implicit suppression equally contributed to improving an individual’s estimation speed (but not ACC (accuracy)). The MCE task related ERP (event-related potential) results showed that the influence of implicit emotion regulation on estimation consisted of two phases. In the first phase (encoding phase), implicit reappraisal both enhanced (larger P1 amplitudes) and weakened (smaller N170 amplitudes) an individual’s encoding sensitivity, while implicit suppression enhanced an individual’s encoding sensitivity (larger P1 amplitudes). In the second phase (estimation strategies retrieval phase), implicit reappraisal (but not implicit suppression) cost more attention resources (larger LPC2 and LPC3 amplitudes). The present study suggested that both implicit reappraisal and implicit suppression contributed to improving an individual’s estimation performance, and the regulation effect of implicit suppression (vs. implicit reappraisal) was better.

Background: Social anxiety is prevalent among college students, and shyness has been consistently linked to elevated social anxiety. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying this association remain insufficiently understood. This study examined whether regulatory emotional self-efficacy and resilience mediate the association between shyness and social anxiety among Chinese college students. Methods: This study employed the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale, 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and Interaction Anxiousness Scale to survey 1,012 college students from three universities in Shandong, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces. Pearson correlation analysis and PROCESS Macro Model 6 regression analysis were used to examine the relationships among shyness, regulatory emotional self-efficacy, resilience, and social anxiety. Result: Shyness was positively associated with social anxiety. Resilience significantly mediated this association. In addition, shyness was indirectly associated with social anxiety through the sequential pathway of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and resilience. However, regulatory emotional self-efficacy alone did not independently mediate the relationship. Conclusion: These findings suggest that resilience plays a central role in the association between shyness and social anxiety, and that regulatory emotional self-efficacy may function indirectly through resilience. Interventions targeting resilience and regulatory emotional self-efficacy may help reduce social anxiety among shy college students.

We aimed to establish and evaluate a standardized emotional situation sentence system (ESSS) relevant to the lives of college students to supplement prior literature and adapt to the needs of emotional research. Two studies were designed for this research; study 1 examined the effect of words in the ESSS and study 2 involved the use of pictures. For Study 1, 778 items were selected by 607 college students and 15 experts. We then tested the scale with 80 undergraduate participants. The ESSS sentences were rated on their degree of valence, arousal, and dominance using a 9-point scale. Cronbach’s α (greater than 0.986) of the overall score as well as each sub-score in the three components confirmed the scale’s reliability. As seen on a scatter plot, the results suggest that negative emotions (fear, disgust, anger, sadness, anxiety) are convergent and different from the distribution of positive (happiness) and neutral emotions. Study 2 included 30 participants to compare the difference in valence and arousal between the ESSS and emotional pictures. The results indicate that the ESSS is a standardized, situational, and ecological emotional contextual text system, well-suited to invoke emotion in college students. The ESSS has significantly better arousal and potency than pictures; moreover, it can be applied to experimental studies of anxiety-related emotions. However, emotion pictures have shorter response times, and wider application ranges, and they can include more cross-cultural characteristics compared to words.

Background: The existence of aggressive behavior in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) raises questions about whether cognitive and emotional factors in social information processing play a role between autistic traits (ATs) and aggressive behavior in the general population, especially in the context of Chinese culture. Moreover, given a possible gender difference in these variables, the study aimed to examine the effect of ATs on aggressive behavior, and the potential mediating role of hostile attribution bias and alexithymia on this association, as well as gender difference. Methods: 850 Chinese college students participated in the assessment, including their ATs, hostile attribution bias, alexithymia, and aggressive behavior. Pearson correlation, mediation effects analyses, and multiple-group comparison were conducted. Results: The results indicated that ATs indirectly predicted increased aggressive behavior through attribution bias and alexithymia. Gender difference in mediating effects was revealed: ATs indirectly predicted increased aggressive behavior through the serial mediating effect only in males. Conclusion: Hostile attribution bias and alexithymia completely mediated the association between ATs and aggressive behavior, which contained the separate mediating effects of (a) hostile attribution bias and (b) alexithymia and the serial mediating effect of (c) hostile attribution bias and alexithymia. Gender differences in mediating effects were found only in the serial mediating effect, which was significant in males but not in females. The findings revealed the internal mechanism of ATs affecting aggressive behavior and gender difference, which have implications for the intervention of aggressive behavior of individuals with autism and those with high levels of ATs.

Research on emotion regulation should not be limited to negative emotion regulation, but should also include cognitive activities. This study examined the impact of positive emotion regulation on convergent creativity through an ERP analysis. The study sample comprised 57 undergraduates. They were divided into cognitive reappraisal, expression suppression, and control groups and completed emotional regulation and convergent creativity tasks. The results showed that when undergraduates used different emotion regulation strategies to regulate positive emotions and then completed the convergent creativity tasks, the cognitive reappraisal group performed better. In the early stage (Q-N1), cognitive reappraisal can enhance the sensitivity of individuals to convergent thinking. In the late stage (P350-2000), cognitive reappraisal can help individuals reduce the consumption of attention resources, especially in the P350-650, and the promotion effect of cognitive reappraisal is most obvious. The results suggest that if individuals can remain relatively calm at the early stage of solving the convergent creativity tasks, it will help them to understand the task and improve their performance in convergent creativity.